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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674111">The Doorway to the Force</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andraem/pseuds/Andraem'>Andraem</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Dreams, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Force magic I made up, Hux was never demoted, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:22:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andraem/pseuds/Andraem</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In his deeper pursuit of the Force, Kylo Ren discovers an ancient temple where reality seems to shape itself. The more he explores the alternate worlds inside, the more he has to face his true nature and the things he really wants.</p>
<p>Meanwhile General Hux continues the First Order's expansion with a new homeworld while contending with Ren's odd behaviour both old and new.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Kylux Big Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Doorway to the Force</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kylo was alone.</p>
<p>He stood under an arch of stone that marked the entrance. No inscriptions or carvings, no indications of any kind, but for the way it plainly matched the texts they’d uncovered—they, the Knights of Ren, and Kylo, lost in the tunnels of a fallen Sith empire nearly three years ago.</p>
<p>Three stone hills, shorn wildly as if by lightning, and a stark, man-made structure growing up out of them. The architecture was of a style long forgotten.</p>
<p>Where he expected a breeze or airflow by the doorway, there was nothing. Like this whole planet, seemingly, the air was silent and still.</p>
<p>For thirty yards or more Kylo walked inside, nowhere else to go but forward. Though the light disappeared before long, he found he could still see, and something about it felt distinctly non-human. The shadow of his maskless face was cast here and there on the unadorned walls, and if it weren’t for his childhood dreams of silhouettes and voices behind his eyelids, Kylo might have been alarmed. As it were, tricks of the Force were somewhat expected.</p>
<p>The end of the barren corridor gave way to an open chamber. Metal rods were affixed at intervals to the walls, such that gonfalons might once have hung there, or indeed many things Kylo had no names for. Unlit sconces were between each one, along the walls that curved lengthways and upwards, making a dome, and directly under the centre of the dome was some low stonework. Kylo thought of his father for just a moment... how he might have taken one of those torch holders and thrown it in a cart to sell later.</p>
<p>He practiced mindfully shutting it away. Compartmentalising was becoming easier.</p>
<p>As he walked across the slate-coloured floor he stepped on words he couldn’t read. They were faint but patterned. Uniform rows, or maybe columns, lining up and down the circular room. Rounded, soft letters. He guessed they predated the Sith usage of this structure, though he couldn’t be sure. There were drag marks in the stone in places, like many things had come and gone and been moved across the years. None of them remained, of course, whatever they’d been.</p>
<p>The low stone at the room’s centre was clear now; a well, like the type primitive societies used to collect water. It was filled to just below the base of the stone surrounding it, level with the floor, and Kylo stopped cold as the space underneath came into focus.</p>
<p>There was a room inside. Deep, deep inside, he gauged. He felt his skin come alive with a sudden shiver. Sitting to get a better view, his hand touched several ridges in the stone and he realised the surface of the wall was carved with writing. Different to the font on the floor, different in construction, these looked as if they’d been etched with difficulty. He ran his fingers along the straight lines and sharp angles and remembered there were people who studied lost languages and carvings, and frowned for the fact he knew none. The list of people he really knew was, admittedly, short.</p>
<p>He peered into the water again, looking quickly past his reflection with a grimace.</p>
<p>The floor below was the colour of pale sand, tessellated with shapes Kylo hadn’t seen before. There was what looked to be a table or altar straight below and off-centre, nearly out of view, were a few stone shelves and benches, perhaps. Hardly thinking, Kylo began to remove his outer cloak. He draped it on the low wall and swung his legs over, lowering them into the water and pausing as he acknowledged what he was about to do. He reached for his saber and checked it was fastened well on his belt. In his mind he heard the voice of General Hux, wont as he was to caution Ren whenever he strayed from the military’s watch.</p>
<p>
  <em>What do you think you’re doing?</em>
</p>
<p>And Kylo laughed a little, answering the phantom voice by releasing the wall’s edge and dropping in.</p>
<p>With half-full lungs and heavy, drenched clothing he let himself sink and came to land beside the altar; a bowl-shaped object on a pedestal of carved stone, rimmed by an outer ledge which itself was inlaid with smaller bowls. The other furnishings were made to match, stone with brass inlays. He quickly saw the shelves were empty, and his eyes narrowed in disappointment. He turned slowly and inspected the room. It wasn’t large, he could have crossed it in four strides if walking.</p>
<p>He spent his shallow breath investigating the room’s corners and shapes. If there were secrets held there, he wasn’t finding them. Of course, the altar had ritual purpose of some kind, but nothing had been said of it in the sources he’d recovered. The Doorway to the Force, it had been called. The temple generally, that is—though the translation was rough at best. Old Sith. There were droids who could read it, but the Order had only managed to find one in great disrepair.</p>
<p><em>There are some things credits and technology can’t do, General</em>. Kylo had winced in annoyance when he said it, seeing Hux’s dismissal as nakedly on his face as if he’d read his mind. With Hux he never needed to.</p>
<p>He swam towards the well’s opening, needing time to think. His own ignorance was overwhelming. Like a child in a desert waste who finds a holonet recording and has no way to conceive of what he holds, let alone a way to view it.</p>
<p>Kylo’s senses became alert, then. The water’s weight was increasing as he swam upward, as if in fact he swam deeper. The tightness was disconcerting, and he kicked in earnest to reach the surface.</p>
<p>But the water didn’t relent, it only got heavier and harder to move through, until his hand, nearly reaching the surface of the water, found it couldn’t move any further. He coughed out some dregs of air in surprise and pulled his arms down, but no force came of it, no forward motion, only the feeling of being held tight. He moved down a little and found that he could. No resistance there. But no matter how much he kicked and struggled, there was nothing to be gained from trying to surface. It was as unreachable as the ocean floor is to a buoy.</p>
<p>As the seconds passed, Kylo knew he would open his mouth and breathe. There was nothing for it. He was a Force user but he was also human, and sure enough the urgency built up in his unfortunate mortal body and he gasped, and the world went dark.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He woke standing in the light of day. The watery room had been snatched from under him and in its place was solid floor —or ground— paved in silvery-grey and walked on by an intermittent crowd whose feet Kylo noticed beside his own, and his attention was drawn up and onto the city in front of him.</p>
<p>This was no place he recognised. It was prettier than anywhere he’d been in recent memory, and clean and calm. The people were mostly but not all human, and dressed in an array of colours, in clothes he’d both seen and not seen, milling around between mixed buildings that lined the streets. Not a military officer in sight, except—</p>
<p>‘Hux—’ He let out his name as soon as he recognised him standing there just a pace away, and Hux turned to look at Kylo as his name was called. The expression was almost alien on Hux’s face; open and casual and without irritation. His eyebrows were relaxed, as was his stance, and though still standing straight and tall there was fluidity in the way he turned.</p>
<p>‘Mhm?’</p>
<p>Kylo had never heard him say this either. Say… or rather, mumble. He was stuck like a night creature in a tractor beam.</p>
<p>‘D’you see something?’ Hux continued when he got no reply, glancing forward as he kept pace, ‘Ah that’s right, the new waterfront. You haven’t been down this way since they started, have you? Quite ugly, I know. Sure, it’s the style these days but they really should keep the place looking like a space station, don’t you think?’</p>
<p>He kept on walking, seemingly unaware of Kylo’s internal alarm blaring. Something in Kylo told him to comply and he put one foot forward and began walking, suddenly aware he was no longer in his usual tunic, pants and boots but some kind of shirt and utility trousers, like the type worn by traders on the independent outposts. His gloves, too, were gone, and his hands felt the heat of a warm sun pressing on them like a welcome fire.</p>
<p>Hux continued talking, gathering more words per minute than Kylo thought he’d heard from him in his life. He followed him, stunned, into a glass-fronted store with shining tech components laid out minimally in the bright room and gawked as Hux handed over some cloth currency and picked up an oscillator and some other small things it seemed he’d ordered. He schooled his expression into something innocuous, he hoped, and when Hux passed him to leave the store he shot Kylo a smile.</p>
<p>
  <em>It <strong>was</strong> a smile.</em>
</p>
<p>Kylo reeled.</p>
<p>He took a deep breath as he walked out the white doorway and back onto the pavement, nearly reaching out for Hux for fear of losing him in the crowd. Where he would go in this place without him, he had no idea. What was his identity here? Did he have somewhere to be? Was he, in fact, just dead?</p>
<p>He reached out with the Force, remembering he had it and feeling foolish that he’d forgotten, and was calmed by its familiar aura. Someone’s voice came to him then, and a flash of faces and emotions he knew were their thoughts. But he wasn’t reaching for them.</p>
<p>Confusion seeped down his body like being soaked from a storm. He focussed on Hux again, determined to hang onto the only thing he knew here, and saw his thoughts, too. No effort. It was as easy as listening to a song, and Hux’s attention was being caught gently on the things he saw as they walked; the trees (there were… trees?), the small gand who ran across the street and dodged a slow-moving speeder, a place that looked like a bar putting up their menu on a metal plate affixed to the narrow building. He realised too late that Hux was talking again.</p>
<p>‘—and the dynasty on Kaussen thinks they can take over the local corridor. Can you believe it? They’re saying, at the research station, I mean, that the Alliance is going to push back against them if they try anything. Really, who cares these days? It’s a no-sum game.’</p>
<p>Hux wasn’t getting riled as he said any of this. He was swinging his bag of purchases lightly to and fro, and Kylo saw on his hands there were freckles. He’d never seen Hux’s bare hands. Did he really have freckles there, or was this unthinkable world just that sunny? The thought lingered.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And Kylo blinked awake on the floor. His robe was under him, draped as he was on the edge of the stone well, clothes apparently dry. His hair clung damply to his face, the only indication he’d been submerged. He reached for his saber and found it in its place, and looked around the domed room for… something. Someone. But found he was alone again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The journey back towards Oplan was wistful and uneasy. He felt something like a mix of despair and intense excitement the whole time he piloted himself back to the rendezvous. Where had he gone? Inside the recess of his mind? Inside a dreamscape? He couldn’t tell. Fear had stopped him from re-entering the pool, but something from the edges of the Force calmed him as he thought more on it, bringing his shuttle in to land on the Steadfast’s bay floor. Reconvening with Order personnel grounded him, strangely, and the normalcy of everyone carrying out their tasks was welcome background for his disarrayed thoughts.</p>
<p>What did not ground him, however, was the display of ideas, complaints and wonderings thrown out from the troopers and officers whenever he got close to them. The Force was detecting them all on its own. He needed only take stock of it and there they were, everyone’s surface thoughts clear as day, and everyone none the wiser.<br/>
It was… interesting.</p>
<p>The vision from the pool had unlocked something, it seemed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aboard the shuttle to their new home planet, Kylo couldn’t keep still. He wandered down the short halls and pictured Hux as he’d been on that space station. He saw the soft currency pass along the countertop of the store. Heard the unhurried tone in Hux’s voice as he’d spoken. Saw the breeze catch in his hair outside, orange like the sun.</p>
<p>He looked down at himself reflected in the gleaming black floor of the corridor, and for once didn’t flinch away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Far below the Steadfast, on the planet the First Order had newly acquisitioned, grand construction was in progress.</p>
<p>It was night there, and General Hux was in his forty-eighth hour of wakefulness. Hands clasped at his back, he stood in the mouth of a great tunnel walkway, where hurried activity had recently given way to calm patrols. Transporters rolled past every few minutes and Hux steeled himself not to check each one with impatience, growing weary. He turned and saw Ren a long time before being seen himself, noting how he walked with a lack of conviction that betrayed following directions, and Hux scoffed lightly under his breath.</p>
<p>Kylo had expected to meet Hux at the throne of some grand palace, or, at this time of night, not at all. As it were, he was satisfied to see him out in the relative cold, coat tightly fastened and face pale under the fluorescent bars that lined the walls of the tunnel.</p>
<p>‘So you’ve joined us?’ he began just as Kylo was within range to hear.</p>
<p>Kylo registered the lack of <em>Supreme Leader</em>, but in the dense mist of his thoughts it fell low on the rungs of priorities. Hux waited as if for an answer.</p>
<p>‘I hardly recognise it.’ Kylo looked demonstrably up at the structures half-built above and beyond them, for the first time really looking at what he saw there. Hux glanced upward in a motion that was the beginning of an eye-roll, barely restrained.</p>
<p>‘Obviously. We’ve been hard at work for several months now. I’ve been sending detailed reports at every stage—’</p>
<p>‘I know. I read them.’</p>
<p>‘…ah. You do?’ Hux faltered a little, looking off toward a low cluster of grey-white buildings to the south. ‘Well, there are some details omitted, of course. Security. There’s something I’d like you to see.’</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As they walked, Kylo consciously held himself back from the Force, away from Hux’s thoughts. He knew they would be there should he look for them, but it felt like crossing a line. Why he cared, he wasn’t sure. He trained his mind on other things.</p>
<p>‘I thought you saw home planets as a vulnerability? Hosnian Prime. Alderaan. Crutches to be easily kicked out from under us.’ He didn’t look at Hux then but waited for him to rise to the bait. In honesty he was curious about the change of opinion.</p>
<p>‘You forget the original inhabitants of this place, Ren. I won’t be sending them all off-world. Far from it. They will reside among us, the laypeople, that is, and in return we will keep them safe. Those Resistance cowards with their moral high-ground wouldn’t dare cut off our supplies or launch a direct assault with civilians in our midst.’ He broke off his gaze for a while to scan the road, following the cargo transports and small tanks.</p>
<p>‘But you’re right. I don’t place much value in stationary headquarters. I continue to live aboard the Steadfast, if you must know.’</p>
<p>Kylo glanced up at it then, the dark purple kite in the night sky. The flickering lights on its underside were hard pressed to break through the fog, but Kylo watched them, twinkling in a way almost like stars.</p>
<p>‘Do you think it’s wise to keep them here?’ he asked, looking again to the road ahead. ‘The locals, who surely hate us for our invasion and conspire against you even as we speak?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, they might have conspired once. We took care of such people in the first weeks, as you may remember; the ‘township’, from my report, but it was hardly a town, and those who chose to live are quite in favour of new leadership.’</p>
<p>‘Really?’</p>
<p>They had reached a steel-grey terminus that lofted up over the nearby rock and swallowed it with a dark canopy. From the overhang, Kylo could see railings and workers standing by, and an air cruiser coming in to dock. Hux carried himself with newfound speed over to the head stormtrooper guarding the entrance, and Kylo observed with come curiosity the way he seemed enlivened by their short conversation, and how he smiled with almost unguarded satisfaction.</p>
<p>He returned to Kylo’s side, and guided them through a side doorway Kylo hadn’t noticed, down a long corridor which looked to him a mirror of the First Order fleet design. For a while he felt as if they would turn a corner and see a familiar trapezoidal window, and beyond it the darkness and the stars.</p>
<p>There were no windows, however, only the customary white bevelled panels. Hux was positively speed-walking, and Kylo let out a puff of laughter. Hux either noticed it or decided independently to compose himself, and he slowed a little, glancing at the door numbers on each bay until finally they came to a stop. The bay doors let out a <em>shhhhh</em> of resistance to being opened, and then the room was unveiled and Hux was looking to Kylo to follow him in.</p>
<p>Armed personnel transports were standing by, a few ready to launch, and beyond them on the gleaming black floor, coffles of poorly-dressed humans were shuffling towards them, mostly adults, it seemed; their hands and ankles manacled and chained to those in front, being steered by troopers on either side and made to wait by the transports.</p>
<p>As Kylo neared he could see their clothes were long like gowns, all a dusty yellow, some smeared with dried earth or maybe blood. Hux looked at Kylo curiously, expectantly, and his face beamed with the smug look of a man about to do some long-anticipated explaining.</p>
<p>‘Cultists, Ren.’ He began with much emphasis, and Kylo sensed in him a triumph that seemed a little overstated. ‘They made up quite a grand minority of the religious worship here, though their ways aren’t well-understood by the regular citizens. Naturally they tried to kill us, though with barely anything I’d call <em>technology</em>. They were soon rounded up.’</p>
<p>Kylo was listening but his attention was on the faces of a few of the men in front. They glared at him with trance-like intensity.</p>
<p>‘What is it they believe in?’</p>
<p>‘We don’t know. Sand snakes? Their hovels were full of writhing creatures cast in stone, it was quite unpleasant. What’s more important is what they represent.’ And at this Hux turned to face Kylo, blocking his line of sight to the chained cultists, ‘I plan to send decoys of them to the mid worlds; the kind with fewer loyalties to the Republic but whose trade we don’t yet control. A few high-profile abductions, spilled blood, sacrifices, that sort of thing, and some ties to the Resistance…</p>
<p>‘You think they’ll fall for that?’ Kylo was having fun now, countering Hux with rhetoric he knew posed no threat. He liked to see him argue. ‘The Resistance in league with a nefarious cult? Not all mid-rim planets are led by fools.’</p>
<p>‘No. But the evidence will be indisputable. All this you can leave to me, Ren. I’ve been planning for months while you’ve been off crawling in the dark for old books and old men’s sad prophecies.’<br/>
<br/>
The words were of typical Hux bitterness but there wasn’t the usual edge. Kylo eyed him with more curiosity. He never was good at reading people the old-fashioned way.</p>
<p>With just a hint of the force, he cast his mind out towards Hux and, as he was now just getting used to, plainly saw his feelings. Exhaustion. His mind was swimming with plans for the day and his heart was racing, his whole body agitated with the need for sleep. Kylo went further, looking past Hux at the cult members to hide his concentration. It had been this way for a long time. Hux hadn’t slept in… he couldn’t tell exactly, but… more than a day or so. It was unreasonable, even if he didn’t trust the safety of a home planet. <em>What does it matter</em>, thought Kylo, <em>if you sleep on solid ground or in a ship?</em> He thought perhaps Hux had lived too long on star destroyers and felt uneasy under the gaze of a blue sky.</p>
<p>He let go, and his senses came back to the outside world. Hux had been speaking but he hadn’t heard.</p>
<p>‘Hux—’</p>
<p>‘—and ther— Yes?’</p>
<p>‘You’re overseeing all these projects, correct?’</p>
<p>‘Of course. You know this.’</p>
<p>Insubordinate, again. But Kylo decided not to push.</p>
<p>‘Then… I’m changing your station. You can’t oversee all this remotely. It’s inefficient. I assume you have somewhere set aside to live down here.’</p>
<p>‘But surely—’</p>
<p>Kylo made to take a step forward, and it was all Hux needed to be silent. He looked into the visor of Kylo’s helmet, though it was dark and blank, and narrowed his eyes there in a semblance of defiance. Finally, he looked away.</p>
<p>‘Well. As you wish, Supreme Leader. Will you be staying? The officers are beginning to feel you’ve abandoned them.’ He started walking towards the exit and Kylo naturally followed.</p>
<p>His face covered, Kylo let himself smile just a little, thinking he might have detected some subtlety after all.</p>
<p>‘Are they, now?’</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A bird called out.<br/>
It wasn’t singing; just a single noise here, then there, then here again.</p>
<p>Another trip into the temple. Another spiriting away by the force. This was number six.<br/>
He had come awake lying in a tent roughly twelve hours ago. It wasn’t the longest expedition to date, so he supposed that some of them naturally took longer than others. He must not have come across the lesson yet.</p>
<p>He looked ahead to his party of trackers. Six humans, including General Hux. Hux was always here. They walked in loose formation, headed back to their camp for the night. Kylo looked around but couldn’t see the bird.</p>
<p>The land here was gently rolling but the plants were extraordinarily tall. Huge shrubs made natural hedgerows more than fifteen feet high. Broad, waxy leaves wider than Kylo himself swayed every so often in the warm winds. The paths were always close and winding, vegetation high on both sides and hills never far away; green and darker green. Everyone carried long blades with prominent hilts; swords, not blasters, and no electrical equipment in sight.</p>
<p>In the morning they’d hunted a creature, tracked it to a den inside a marsh wood, and Kylo had watched the team surround it and take it down with their swords, though it stood many feet taller than any of them. It had been some mammal, he supposed, with six legs and a pointed, canine face, all brown and grey. Expecting something in the Force to call to him, maybe at the moment of its death, Kylo had stood on the periphery of the fight. But it died like any animal, fighting and snarling, then calm and suddenly gone. He’d found himself more than a little useless, and even now only watched as three other members of the group carried its corpse along their way. Its ragged fur bobbed up and down with their steps like a phantom imitation of breath.</p>
<p>Hux must have noticed his dejection, and he fell back to Kylo’s pace. Not only was he always here, in the visions— though they were never the same world twice— but he was always <em>the same</em>. A lot like General Hux. A lot less highly-strung. Hux if all his cares had been wiped away, or if he’d simply never had any. He was even pleasant to be around, Kylo thought. His footfalls landed in time with Kylo’s own, making a now-familiar dull clack on the trodden grass.</p>
<p>‘You haven’t said much today.’</p>
<p>‘I haven’t?’ Kylo replied too quickly, and found he was at a loss for words. He always was when the people in the Force visions struck up conversation. ‘I guess I haven’t. I’ve been… thinking.’</p>
<p>Hux tilted his head at him and smiled, a smile he was getting used to on all the Huxes he’d met so far, unguarded and cheerful. He’d barely seen his Hux back on Oplan smile more than a sneer. Once or twice, maybe.</p>
<p>‘What about?’</p>
<p>Then, suddenly Kylo realised he could ask. Could find out if people here knew about the Force. If they believed in it, or feared it. Or maybe even used it. He tried to put on a smile of his own and found it came easily.</p>
<p>‘How about I tell you when we get back?’</p>
<p>Hux agreed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>At the camp the creature was wrapped in some form of paper and tied to log stakes for easier carrying, then the other hunters retired to their chores and to relax. Kylo didn’t know where home was for these people, and he supposed he’d never find out, but part of him wondered about them as he lay on his back inside his tent. He felt a pang of sadness for their houses and lives he’d never see. There’d been a time when he would have hated himself for that, but these days he was feeling less and less inclined towards self-destruction.</p>
<p>Eventually the fire went out, and the frequent footsteps outside became less so, and distant, and Kylo took off his sabatons and boots and accoutrements. He had just laid it all out beside his woven bed roll when Hux called his name and appeared at the entrance.</p>
<p>‘Oh good, you’re awake,’ he said, and stepped inside with bare feet. Kylo righted himself and moved his sword for Hux to have a place to sit. How he’d have liked a good few weeks here to take a closer look at all the things that were fleetingly his; the sword, the armour, his bag and clothes and tools. Not to mention friends. He really tried not to engage too much with the people in the visions, save for Hux, who he quickly realised wouldn’t leave him alone anyway. And it was useful having an approachable version to test out. He could do mundane things like ask him his favourite foods. Or what he thought of this thing or the other; what he thought of other people and their actions. They could simply talk.</p>
<p>When Hux sat down he did so cross-legged like a child.</p>
<p>‘Well?’ he peered around as if the answer was in the tent. ‘What was it you were thinking about today that you couldn’t tell me on the trail?’</p>
<p>Kylo decided to just be plain about it. If he reacted badly, there would always be another vision; another Hux, another group.</p>
<p>‘Do you know anything about the Force?’</p>
<p>Hux looked untroubled. ‘No, what’s that? Is it an army?’</p>
<p>‘No—’ he paused, looking involuntarily at his own hands, ‘It’s… just something that’s all around us. You haven’t heard people talk about that? An energy?’</p>
<p>‘Like life?’</p>
<p>‘No—I mean, yes, in a way. But you can control it. Do… things with it that other people can’t.’</p>
<p>Hux was shaking his head, looking thoughtful. ‘So, it’s a form of magic?’</p>
<p>‘Maybe.’</p>
<p>Hux huffed out a sigh of laughter and lay down, his legs uncrossing themselves.</p>
<p>‘The only magic I’ve heard of is the kind done by sprites and demons. And, of course, we all know those don’t come this far North in the second summer.’</p>
<p>Kylo’s head spun with how much there was to unload there, but there likely wasn’t time. He’d had visions before where there was no Force lesson or, more likely, where he had missed it. He didn’t particularly enjoy drowning for nothing.</p>
<p>Hux was looking at the fabric ceiling in contemplation. Kylo just wanted to tell him everything. That he was in a kind of dream made by the force he’d dedicated his life to exploring and mastering, and how Hux was out there in his real world, too, where they had an army, and <em>you’re always here. Always a different place, a different time, but you’re always here…</em></p>
<p>‘Can you do it, then? The things other people can’t do?’</p>
<p>Hux had turned onto his side to face him, his head cushioned under one arm. His hair was cut just as it was on General Hux, but here left to fall where it wanted.</p>
<p>And then Kylo thought back to the creature that day. How he’d tried to reach for its thoughts, being a living thing like any other he figured he might as well try. How he had seen nothing at the time, but now saw clearly what he’d missed before. The rushing of blood in its veins. The fundamental panic and aggression that tore out of it on every strike of a sword. And Kylo, of course, had wanted the group to win swiftly and without harm, and so then it had stopped thrashing, and somehow he knew he had made it feel nothing when the final few hits landed.</p>
<p>Tentatively, he reached out in the Force that same way, towards Hux. He sensed the motion of his lungs and heart. He sensed his own image in his eyes. He could feel the pulse of connections in his brain, running through from one mind into the other, and it almost made Kylo’s head hurt to accept them, and so he pulled back, and stopped, and knew he could take all those things and control them if he wanted. He could stop the motion, black out the images or sever the connections. Hux must have noticed the change on his face and slowly sat up, and reached out a hand to nudge it against Kylo’s own.</p>
<p>Kylo didn’t move. He took a deep breath and gave his reply.</p>
<p>‘I can.’</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the time that followed, Kylo, too, partly based himself on Oplan in the now-grand rooms of the First Order military complex. It was half in the towers of white that reached up in soft shapes among the rest of the city, and half contained underground. When the troopers finished one shift and exchanged duties, it was out onto warm streets bathed in sun that they marched, near to the richer common folk of Oplan who, in some local treachery, regarded them as protection, and their egos swelled all the more to be the centre of a dark regime as once their ancestors had told of.</p>
<p>Reports of cultist activity had spread like Hux had planned, and squadrons were deployed to quell their troubles, so that night after night they could be seen streaking across the sky like flocking birds. In the next few months, eight more systems came under deference to the Order. Kylo led assaults on their enemies to secure favour, and after that, had only to extinguish a few autocrats from afar before fear of his power was total, though Hux often argued to publicize more interrogations and killings than was necessary, and Kylo had just as often to talk him down.</p>
<p>He tried to limit his meddling in Hux’s mind, but on his other subjects he had free reign. A number of older generals had grown weary of life under their young commander, being of minds formed in a time where seniority ruled and having awaited old age for a chance to grasp at power. General Hux had spoken of them, though Ren could see and hear it readily in the corridors and meeting chambers where officers talked among themselves in what they thought to be confidence, and he removed them one morning—to Hux’s delight— with a wave of his hand in front of the upper council.</p>
<p>More enemy rulers than not died under persuasion of The Force, too, asphyxiating with full lungs or, like the work of a crotalid snake, with their blood transformed beyond use or leaving them entirely. For all his creativity, Kylo tried each method only once. The incurring of pain wasn’t really what pleased him. He lived to search the Force, explore it, and through catharsis of commanding it, maybe one day break through the darkness and out the other side into freedom.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hux came to him one afternoon as he read a book of martial treatises from the local stacks. The culture was unfamiliar and so he concentrated hard to follow the flow of ideas, but still he picked up a sense of someone approaching with intent to meet with him, and it eased his spirits to learn that it was Hux.</p>
<p>But all gladness fell away when he began to speak.</p>
<p>‘I see that you’ve come back.’</p>
<p>Hux’s countenance had relaxed even more towards him since their headquarters had risen; when Ren had begun more often to talk to him, and laugh with him, and even sometimes sit in quiet together by the consular parapets, on the decreasingly rare occasions they both had time for idle sitting. But now he spoke the way he’d done long before, with bitterness and cold.</p>
<p>‘Things falling apart without me for a week or two?’ Ren tried to bring his voice some levity, but it died in the air before he’d finished when Hux’s face stayed firm. He pushed his books aside.</p>
<p>‘You’ve been gone three-and-a-half planetary months. I was told you were nowhere aboard the Steadfast, nor any of our ships; that your Silencer had taken off as scheduled but failed to return. Your journey estimation was of a week and I expected, as the weeks drew on, that you might provide some explanation upon your return. Yet, without a word you come with no report, and I’m informed of your safety and arrival by rumours; by stormtroopers who saw you depart the landing bay and by private citizens who saw you in a library. We are at war, Ren. And you are our leader.’</p>
<p>‘Three and a half months?’</p>
<p>‘Didn’t you hear me? And I thought—’</p>
<p>‘I was… not gone for three months. Hux…’</p>
<p>In the silence that followed, Hux’s face dropped from its consternation into a look that was maybe sadness. He sighed and looked to the pile of vellum hardbacks at Kylo’s side. In turn Kylo stole a glance at his mind and saw no books there, only that he’d been alone.</p>
<p>He almost said <em>I’m sorry</em>, but this wasn’t Force-vision Hux, and his face flushed thinking of the reaction he might get from such a phrase. When he looked at Hux’s past few months and felt his lack of company and affirmation, though, he found it was all he wanted to say.</p>
<p>‘It seems like time got away from me. The places I’m searching are vast and often confusing…’</p>
<p>He saw Hux close his eyes briefly before turning to look at him again, his face still plaintive. Kylo wished he could erase Hux’s memory of what he’d done, but such things still eluded him, and even so he would have felt wrong to have tried.</p>
<p>‘I’ll be more careful,’ he said, finally.</p>
<p>Hux looked into his eyes and Kylo felt ashamed for the first time in many years, unable look anywhere else. Eventually Hux glanced about the room behind him, as though he were about to engage in some offence, and without a word sat down beside the books and took the uppermost from the pile.</p>
<p>‘… I didn’t think you read military strategy, Ren,’ he said, and began taking off a glove so that he might turn the worn pages.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the morning when orange-pink light from a nearby sun managed to squeeze through the small rectangle in the ceiling, Kylo pulled himself up to stare out of that window, which was set into the ground above and looked more like that of a dungeon than of a holding cell. But it was not the kind of prison filled with long-dead bodies, and in fact had most of the comforts of a room aboard the average fleet vessel, albeit with less light and even less dignity, for when he sat on the sleeping bench he felt as an abandoned animal might, waiting in a far-flung enclosure for its owner to whom it was now a distant memory.</p>
<p>Where the Force might have secured his freedom forever in the waking world, here it was not so. Nothing he could conjure stirred the metal of the door to open, nor the walls to break or even flex, and so it was on the second day he turned his attention to the view above.</p>
<p>Not long after arriving, he’d seen the core Resistance leaders cross the grounds there; had caught a glimpse of two of their faces. The deserter named Finn, and Rey herself.</p>
<p>From down here Rey didn’t seem as small as he’d remembered. Kylo knew she was mostly happy here, and in their connection through her eyes he saw the smiling faces of her friends more often, he thought, than he’d ever touched a planet’s surface. It made him almost sick to see their bright and tender eyes look into hers, though he felt the way her heart swelled when they did, and somehow that feeling was the worst of all.</p>
<p>With nothing to do in the cell, he often dropped into her mind and watched, and if she knew it, she never gave any indication. But as she trained daily in the Force much like the old masters taught young Jedi for aeons, he knew that to train in the light was to waste a lifetime learning to read one script, only for a thousand languages to stand at your back unacknowledged. And so it frustrated and even pained him to see her squander it all, moving rocks and healing pilots’ broken bones.</p>
<p>How he wanted to anger or upset her and give rise to the spark of passion that leads down the deeper path. But she seemed not to hear him speak as he heard her, nor visit the cell block or inquire after him, though she did think on it.</p>
<p>But the days of war had passed, and Rey had her sights on rebuilding. In time, Kylo was deposited gasping onto the floor of the temple no wiser in the Force than when he’d entered, and there he shivered, not from the water but from the chill of longing and the fact of Hux’s absence. It had been the first vision without him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A planetary month passed, and Kylo hardly left the command complex and surrounding city. He hadn’t dared revisit the temple, but he wasn’t without purpose here on Oplan, for General Hux had them receiving state officials and planning operations together often, and on the solstice to great applause Hux had cast yet another star into oblivion with their latest weapon test, and there hung in its place now a black hole, much darker than black and still more horrifying.</p>
<p>In the wake of the star’s destruction, however, Kylo’s thoughts were consumed by the ever-growing curiosity he’d known all his life. He longed for it just as he longed for the abstracted version of Hux that almost always came with it, the one who freely gave his affection and honest council— the latter of which, it was true, the authentic Hux had become more known to do as time went on. And maybe, just perhaps some of the former, too, if a true smile given across an interrogation room and increasing casual proximity could be called affection.</p>
<p>It might have been that too many smiles across interrogation rooms were to blame for the nature of the next Force vision, and if so, Kylo still couldn’t bring himself to regret them, though he found himself paralysed with fear of what was lain out before him.</p>
<p>He was marched to a small, oblong chamber pressed in by a low ceiling, and guarded by a strengthened, grated door. On the way, he had glimpsed the dark quarters of a dismal city beyond their elevated stronghold, from a crumbling balcony he had been swiftly led past. The skyline was orange-red and held both a moon and sun, each only just visible, and in looking away from it with deep-seated unease Kylo had become aware of himself and the thing he carried; a lance-like weapon with a curved grip section not unlike the shape of a blaster rifle’s trigger. There was one halfway down the length and one at the near end, and on the far end a simple, pointed blade.</p>
<p>Once escorted to the chamber, he was bowed to by three exceptionally tall inhuman figures and quickly led inside. The door locked, though Kylo needn’t have turned to see it as the mechanisms rang out in the near-empty space.</p>
<p>On the stone floor accompanied by nothing at all sat General Hux, or whoever he was in this world, though he looked as he always did in these many places, and as Kylo approached he raised his face and Kylo saw that he was gravely injured. His neck and perhaps much below it was severely damaged and as he tried to speak he choked and could not in fact say anything beyond the small cry that befits those who are dying.</p>
<p>When his body allowed him to move, Kylo dropped at his side and laid the lance on the freezing floor, pleading with the powers of the Force that the creatures outside wouldn’t hear the sound and come to check his work was complete. Because he knew what it was he’d been sent to do. It felt like punishment for his hours on hours of wishing at night before dreams that Hux would be there next time beyond the Doorway; of him thinking how cruel the last had been when he was wholly alone, and now some sentience was mistreating him for it. The Force itself, perhaps, though it was the first time Kylo so much as considered it might have any will, and even there in that dire chamber he gave a moment to dismiss the thought as ludicrous.</p>
<p>He reached out a hand and held Hux’s face for the first time, and it was hot to the touch and sticky with blood. Hux closed his eyes and when he did it was as if a candle had been puffed out and the flame holding him aloft was there no longer, and he sank against the wall to lie like a corpse, though he breathed still.</p>
<p>He spoke then, though it was so quiet as to be almost imperceptible.</p>
<p>‘We knew this could happen, didn’t we?’ and his cheekbones raised minutely in attempt of a smile. ‘Every time I saw it done from my chair by the throne, I had the thought that one day it would be me. Did you know that? So precarious are our lives, Ren.’</p>
<p>He thought then of Snoke, and the tools they’d both been to him; a thing who could not even sense the growing dissent that cost him his sordid life, even with all his command of the Force. He must never have found this place, Kylo thought, though he was soon brought out of thinking by Hux taking a ragged breath and shifting slightly.</p>
<p>‘I suppose it would be brash to ask for a final kiss, but I’ll ask all the same. Or does your exulting lord see through your eyes as the rumours say? In which case, as always, I know your fear of him outweighs your love for me.’</p>
<p>So they were together, here. And yet he’d been unkind to Hux, or at least negligent, serving with singular purpose some ruler beyond those walls. A Snoke-like figure, surely, he thought, though it hardly mattered. Kylo felt suddenly out of breath, and indeed his exhale was blocked by a sob he still fought to keep down. The hand on Hux’s face began to quiver, and he lowered it and clenched it into a fist, sensing the texture of the blood smear against his glove, somewhere between dry and wet. Kylo heard the statement repeat itself in the air, like a smog come to suffocate him. He put his hand against Hux’s side, then, unable to bring it back to his face.</p>
<p>‘Hux. I won’t—' he began, though he didn’t know what word should come next. His thoughts turned to the lurching figures outside and how his lance might sweep through them, and in doing so he might carry Hux to a safer place. But he’d seen only a fraction of walkway and knew nothing of this place and its people, and anyway, Hux might expire from loss of blood no sooner than he lifted him up, as seemed increasingly likely.</p>
<p>He saw him on the bridge of the ill-fated Finalizer, standing tall, holding the hearts of their followers almost as surely as he held Kylo’s own, insomuch as most officers and troopers heeded him with all conviction and knew he had risen above them on intelligence and raw ambition. But it was something else to stand beside him in the presence of their master’s dark power and see the self-assuredness on his quite beautiful face, such that Kylo used to think he was made of nothing but smugness and mocking. But if he ever regretted his rejection of the Jedi, the fact that their path would have barred him from standing such and seeing that face made him wonder no more what could have been than he wondered at the mites beneath the soil or the dust that floats with comets.</p>
<p>At this thought, Hux stirred.</p>
<p>His eyes lost their immense weight and reopened, and Kylo saw how something returned to them that had been seeping away, and in the moment between one breath and the next there was a drawing together of the wounds at his neck. Within seconds he sat up more fully, looking with questions into Kylo’s eyes and slowly reaching up to feel the restored skin above his collar.</p>
<p>Kylo felt his own breath taken away, though not, this time, by oncoming sobs but by something he’d felt before, second-hand, when he’d looked through the eyes of the girl named Rey and she gave something of herself to heal her companions. A transfer in the Force. He had thought it a trifling matter of the light, then. That was not so now.</p>
<p>‘I’ve been a coward, Hux… and you must hate me.’</p>
<p>He didn’t let himself look at Hux for fear of what it would do to his resolve, and instead reached for his weapon as he turned, intent on leaving and perhaps losing his life to the monsters in cloaks if only to carve Hux a safe exit. But Hux in turn reached out his foot and swiftly kicked the lance away, sending it scraping across the flagstone with a metallic ringing.</p>
<p>‘Don’t be a fool, too,’ he said, and steadied himself with both hands against the floor. He pushed himself onto one knee and forward, reaching out and resting a hand on Kylo’s neck, the other at his waist, and in the same motion drew him close and took the kiss he’d asked for.</p>
<p>Kylo was never so sure as he was then that his life had turned to fully face the way of passion and emotion, and there he felt them surge to nearly break him.</p>
<p>He was at once on the floor, sitting with Hux above him. His cloak was cast aside and fell to drape partway across the lance, followed by gloves and other clothes. Hux asked him not to stop and, stunned as he was, he complied, and pressed their bodies together, one hand clutching the back of Hux’s torn shirt.</p>
<p>If he’d ever known a time that approached this in elation, he had long forgotten it. Nothing had felt as it did to hold Hux in his arms—not the restoration of belonging when he began his apprenticeship nor the spark of cosmic wonder when he found there was someone else like himself adrift in the pull of the Force. He reached out with that power then and released a jolt of it like a shiver up Hux’s spine, and another slowly searching in his nerves, and made him gasp and press harder as he moved slowly in his lap.</p>
<p>He said <em>sorry</em> for things he didn’t know he’d done in this world, and Hux shushed him, and stroked along his jaw as he kissed him with lips that were hot and firm and damp, leaning into him the way Kylo had thought he could almost picture after many hundreds of hours spent watching the graceful way he moved.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <br/>
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</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Darkness came on Oplan, and with it the sound of engines igniting and churning air through wide combustion chambers, setting the sky ablaze with their myriad lights. The Resistance were making their way toward this sector, bringing with them much of the firepower they’d amassed in their alliances of many years, led by their most gifted pilots. Kylo had seen them preparing; saw them pour over dubious intelligence reports and decide, at last, that these were true and that they must launch their attack soon, despite the civilians. They planned to first access the planet discretely and evacuate them, though such a plan was foolhardy and near-impossible.</p>
<p>He thought maybe Rey sensed something of his vision behind her eyes, and that perhaps the plans he saw were being altered even now as they launched their fleet into the skies. But it didn’t matter. He would black out the pilots in their navigation centres long before they reached firing range. And victory would be assured by Hux’s engineering triumphs; the vast energy weapons they sent upward onboard their destroyers.</p>
<p>Where Kylo stood he couldn’t see General Hux, though he knew him to be dispatching squadrons somewhere by the launch bays and sought to find him before the final departure. Air with the dark scent of ash sunk down from higher altitudes, and Kylo likened it to an inverse of the clean mists that sometimes drift from forest floors. Such a thing he hadn’t seen in a long time, and as he thought of it now, he resolved to see it again.</p>
<p>He climbed the high steps of the runway border and soon carried himself to where a speck of orange stood out among the sea of white. Most of us have seen in life something of which we’re sure we don’t want to let go, be it a place or a person, or a feeling. So Kylo felt there, though he knew that to never let something go, you first had to hold it at all. Minutes passed and there was a rush of heat from the nearby ship’s take off, bathing everything in volcanic glow, and then night was visible again. Hux had his face turned upward, illuminated by departing vessels. Kylo stepped closer, drawing his attention and gaining that warm smile of greeting he’d grown to expect. Hux turned his head to face him.</p>
<p>‘Did you find everything in order?’ he asked, his voice in the lower, gentler tone he fell into when speaking one-to-one.</p>
<p>Kylo nodded and added, ‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘Then shall we go?’ Hux moved his head in the small gesture parents give to their children when setting off on a journey, as if to say, <em>come on, then</em>.</p>
<p>He could not describe the fear he felt then even if he’d wanted to, thinking of the next few seconds and how their aftermath might hurt more badly than anything had hurt until now, before he searched tentatively with the Force and found what he needed.</p>
<p>‘Mh. Let’s go.’</p>
<p>He took Hux’s hand in his, and felt the reciprocal, euphoric close of that hand around his own.<br/>
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</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much to Amiko, with whom I planned this story and whose beautiful artwork was made as a collaboration with this work for the Kylux Big Bang 2020.</p>
<p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/AmikoRoyAi/status/1310241774162583557">Here is the art on twitter!</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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